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Re: [OM] Energy (was Re: Changes on the Zone-10 Front)

Subject: Re: [OM] Energy (was Re: Changes on the Zone-10 Front)
From: Chuck Norcutt <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2011 14:22:56 -0500
I said nothing about peak oil.  The US/world automobile industry and its 
supporting energy infrastructure will not be revamped in 5 years whether 
needed or not.

Chuck Norcutt


On 2/1/2011 12:47 PM, Jan Steinman wrote:
>> From: Chuck Norcutt<chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>
>> He may be a fine engineer but predicting only a 5 year future for
>> hydrocarbon fuels and engines indicates he needs some remedial work
>> in sociology, psychology, political science and economics.  :-)
>
> Or perhaps, just perhaps, he is one of a very few who are actually
> paying attention and who are not in denial.
>
> I'm afraid that "hard science" like physics trumps all the "soft
> sciences" you note in your list, Chuck.
>
> Even the stodgy US EIA, which tends to parrot the petrochemical
> industry line, has recently admitted that the world has passed the
> peak of oil production, and that it's all downhill from here.
>
> And just today, oil cracked $100 a barrel for the first time since
> $147/barrel oil plunged the world into a global recession of a
> magnitude not seen since the Great Depression. I give the current
> weak "recovery" no more than 18 months before the resulting increase
> in economic activity causes us to once again bounce off the glass
> ceiling of energy constraints.
>
> It's simple physics: you need growing energy to grow an economy. Adam
> Smith's "invisible hand" cannot create something that doesn't exist.
> Economics, as we know it, is an open-ended system stuck on a
> closed-loop Earth.
>
> Now you may well recall the time before we were consuming 85 million
> barrels of oil a day as "not so bad," a time when there were plenty
> of cars and oil-driven stuff -- at least for Americans and a few
> select others. But there were many fewer humans around then, and most
> of them were not clamouring for the oil-soaked stuff that the masses
> of India and China now expect as their birthright, just as your
> parents expected for you.
>
> Where the "soft sciences" come in is in how humans will choose to
> deal with the constraints imposed by limits to growth. Look at what's
> happening in Egypt. It started with food protests, and today, food is
> pretty much made out of petroleum. In ten years or less, the same
> process could be playing out in Berlin, Tokyo, and Washington.
>
> Pay attention. Don't be in denial. Make plans. Or simply carry on as
> usual, and suffer the consequences.
>
> ---------------- It is one thing to make a mistake, and quite another
> thing not to admit it. People will forgive mistakes, because mistakes
> are usually of the mind, mistakes of judgment. But people will not
> easily forgive the mistakes of the heart, the ill intention, the bad
> motives, the prideful justifying cover-up of the first mistake. --
> Stephen R. Covey :::: Jan Steinman, EcoReality Co-op ::::
>
-- 
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